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  1. nbryan

    What would you put in your garden for poultry?

    The best garden crop I've fed to my chickens is forage radish, also called tillage radish. A kind of diakon radish, white, taproot shaped. I got the seed to help penetrate hardpan and improve the soil as a cover crop, and soon found out harvesting armloads of leaves and stems and throwing in...
  2. nbryan

    It's 13 degrees outside...And I am worried

    Those round roof poly shelters though cheap and handy, will not shed snow very well. Peaked roof shelters are better at shedding snow (and more expensive), but in either case, getting a "roof rake" shovel really helps. Yes, one has to clear the snow or there will be a collapse, eventually...
  3. nbryan

    It's 13 degrees outside...And I am worried

    Flock of 24 Buff Orps and Black Australorps here in SE Manitoba. 2 Buff Orp roos get their combs trimmed by frostbite, and though they always look ugly as the're frosted down to a pea comb size remnant, they've always ended up fine. I'm sure it's somewhat stressful (do their combs hurt?) but...
  4. nbryan

    snow in run

    First for this structure, but I've built temp greenhouses with poly like this, a bigger structure, that lasted 3 winters! The insulated coop has a screened air inlet about 8" x 18" near the coop floor, and another vent about 12" x 12" near the roof peak.
  5. nbryan

    snow in run

    Any snow has slid off the poly without encouragement, and well-stapled and wrapped around the gable end rafters, the poly can hold a lot of weight. The botoom of the door is supported on a 2x6 that is laying on its edge on the wood chips floor. And the chips are 6+ inches thick on the ground. I...
  6. nbryan

    snow in run

    A-frame winter shelter, 12/12 slope, 6 mil poly tightly stapled, 2x3 rafters made from recycled 2x6 decking, 24" 3/8 ply base sheet. Re-used a door from a field pen. We'll certainly find out soon enough how it holds up with a heavy snow dump. They're fine inside the insulated coop, but having...
  7. nbryan

    Metal corrugated roof! Ugh...

    Completed, out on pasture, and parked with poly shelter for winter.
  8. nbryan

    Metal corrugated roof! Ugh...

    An air space directly below the metal sheets with a vapor barrier, and that air space open to the outside at the eaves, will solve the condensation issue as well as afford some insulating value - how much r-value depends on what you build the barrier with. In my example I applied Reflectix...
  9. nbryan

    Free ranging pros and cons?

    My mobile 9x10 A-frame coop is on pneumatic caster wheels and is fairly easy to move. I use electric poultry netting and move it and the coop to new pasture weekly. The net is 4ft high and makes about a 50ft circle (164ft long with builtin post every 10ft) in which I try to include some bush for...
  10. nbryan

    7 month old buff orpington hen broody, in January?

    Besides it likely being very cold again, another question I have about hatching eggs from my flock is they have freshly started laying and I have heard eggs from young hens are not as desirable as from more mature hens. I am curious if there is any truth to this. Another challenge is isolating...
  11. nbryan

    7 month old buff orpington hen broody, in January?

    Is it common for hens to start brooding middle of winter? After a little research here it appears one of our 18 buff hens has become broody. They all just started laying in December and share the coop with 2 buff orp roosters and 6 dark cornish hens, same age. This hen bristles and blasts out a...
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